What About the Handrails?

Older houses, like this remodel, have gone through many transitions over time. Sometimes owners changed very basic things, such as a handrail.

In our case, the house had two handrails, an extensive one inside going downstairs and one outside leading to the front door. Both of the handrails in the house we remodeled were most likely legal, non-conforming (that is conforming to an older code, but not necessarily the current code). The owners wanted to keep both of the original handrails… but then they decided to change the stairs going up to the front door, and it was determined that the existing stairs connecting to the upper main floor were too narrow and steep.

Going down the stairs was a half-inch diameter copper handrail along the wall, and the way in which it was attached to the wall made it impossible to keep one’s hand on the railing all the way down the stairs. We definitely needed to fix that!

In the end we only changed the handrails because of the two new sets of stairs!